Winston remains king/queenmaker. A Nat-NZF government would have 65/120 seats. A Lab-NZF-Green government would have 63/120.

I’m pleased to have Ghahraman and Warren-Clark in there, as they both seem like good people. They also make the Greens’ caucus 75% women and Labour’s caucus 45.65% women (but meanwhile National’s caucus is lowered to 30.36% women):

Here’s how everyone did in the end (for similar numbers for previous elections, see my previous blog):

In 2020 we could have even more seats swinging from National to Labour after special votes are counted, if the following four trends continue:

Labour did their best ever on special votes: 18.91% better than on preliminary votes. Their previous best was last election, where they did 14.16% better.

National did their worst ever on special votes: 21.12% worse than on preliminary votes. Their previous worst was last election, where they did 16.86% worse.

There were more special votes than ever, even more than the Electoral Commission predicted: 422,094 or 16.29% of votes.

This was the worst election ever for minor parties. National and Labour together won a massive 81.34% of party votes: the highest since party votes have existed:

Meanwhile, TOP did an impressive 63.18% better on specials than on preliminary votes. Only a few parties have done better than this on specials:

One fact from the final results that could give some hope to left-leaning people: The combined National-ACT vote has dropped below 45% for the first time since 2005.

Anyway, now that the final results are in, Winston claims he’ll finalise a coalition agreement within the next five days. Will he do it? Who will he go with? How productively will he work with them? Only time will tell… I can’t predict Winston Peters’ actions with spreadsheets.

The main thing I’m devastated about is the Māori party being driven out of government, and I mainly blame Labour for that. Two kaupapa Māori parties have been driven out of Parliament in the last two elections. Of course, this is partly because of their decisions to sit at tables with rich white men. But it’s also partly because they’ve been taken out by their political opponents. I know that’s politics (and Te Ururoa himself helped defeat Hone last election), but it’s sad. The Māori party were an effective voice for Māori and for justice, and they held the major parties to account on Te Tiriti, which needs to happen. They were the best part of the National-led government and they would have been a good part of a Labour-led government.

Once again I’m angry at the undemocraticness of the 5% threshold for representation. The thousands of party votes TOP and Māori received mean those parties deserve a few seats between them: those party votes should be worth as much as party votes for the big parties. But the threshold (and their failure to qualify for the local-seat exemption) blocks those parties from getting those seats, because of the Electoral Commission’s undemocratic fear of a “proliferation of small parties” with extremist views. And yet ACT survives again because they & National use the local vote to their advantage.

The incoming government: hopes and fears

We don’t know yet what the government will look like, except that it will be some combination of just the four big parties (National has already cast David Seymour aside). While a Labour-NZ First-Green govt is technically possible, it would be a bit of a poisoned chalice for Labour and the Greens: firstly because a lot of people would (rightly or wrongly) consider this government illegitimate, and secondly because they’d have to work with Winston Peters. A National-Green government is also technically possible, but National would have to give some pretty enormous concessions for the Greens to decide the situation has changed and they’re now willing to risk electoral suicide by working with National.

On the whole, I’d be extremely surprised if it doesn’t turn out to be National-NZ First.1 We’ll have to wait and see what a National-NZ First government will look like. We’ll get some clues with coalition negotiations, and find out the rest over the next three long years.

They’re both terrible parties, so their government could be doubly terrible. But my hope is that since they’re terrible in different ways, they could somewhat cancel out each other’s terribleness. E.g. National are too committed to globalisation (for the sake of capitalism) to go too far in appeasing Winnie’s anti-immigrant sentiments. And NZ First are far more economically left-leaning than National,2 so they could hopefully stop National from going too far on neoliberalism. A bunch of things that were passed over the last nine years by National, ACT and Peter Dunne were opposed by NZ First. There is precedent for NZ First holding National to account on its extreme capitalism, such as in the 90s when the minimum wage was not increased during the whole term of the Bolger government until NZ First forced them to increase it in 1997. So I think there is some hope that this government will be not as bad as the government over the last three terms has been.

Secondly, there’s some hope that private members’ bills from the left will be taken over the line by NZ First. For example, it’s possible that a zero carbon by 2050 law could be passed this term.

Thirdly, there’s hope in the way the Overton window has shifted slightly leftward during this election campaign. Earlier on, it looked like it was shifting in a worrying immigrant-scapegoating direction, but the Greens repented of their immigration stance, Labour toned theirs down, National didn’t join in,3 and NZ First somewhat fizzled. The political conversation became more about issues that matter: poverty, homelessness, housing unaffordability, and river water quality (sadly, climate change not enough).

And I think there is some hope that this government will do at least something on these issues. Under Key, National’s line on these issues was basically “there’s no issue”, but under English it’s more like “there is an issue and we’ve got it under control”—not a dramatic difference but an important one. And there are some signs National are starting to actually act on some of these issues. For example, they’ve done some encouraging Housing First experiments in Hamilton and Auckland and it would be great if they made this nationwide.4 And in Paddy Gower’s debate, English famously committed to lifting 100,000 kids out of poverty (even if they have been conveniently vague on what poverty measure he’s using). If this happens, great. If not, it’s something to hold them to account for.5

My biggest fear is that NZ First will push National to revive its policy to abolish the Māori seats. It’s still their policy to do to this eventually, but it’s on hold because “now is not the right time” (translation: we have a government arrangement with the Māori party). Bill English has already said this won’t happen, and I don’t want to believe that he’d do it. He’s seemed quite different to Don Brash on te Tiriti and te ao Māori (and on basic human decency), but Bill English has disappointed me quite a bit over the last few months.

Last but not least, I also have hope that there will be a strong Labour-Green government in three years time. Hopefully Labour has got its act together more by then and is more Corbynite than it is now.

Footnotes

Though Winnie will milk his technical queenmaker powers to gain maximum concessions out of National. ↑

Not out of concern for immigrants so much as concern for immigrants’ low-wage employers, in my opinion. ↑

Housing First is quite a radical reversal of the currently dominant mindset of having a bunch of conditions and sanctions in exchange for any welfare support. It gives an unconditional roof over the head first. Any state involvement in trying to change people’s lives comes after this, and isn’t a condition for having a roof over the head. And it works – it basically eliminates rough sleeping. ↑

However, a third option is probably more likely: they’ll find a measure that allows them to say that they’ve met their target, even though the opposition and pretty much everyone else will say it hasn’t happened. They’ll continue to insist they’re right next election, as they did with the 11 billion dollar hole this time. ↑

The Opportunities Party leader Gareth Morgan has come out swinging against the polls, which unanimously report his party polling nowhere near the 5% threshold. He basically says they’re fake news because they (mostly) only poll landlines. He predicts TOP will actually get between 5% and 10% of the party vote and make it into Parliament.

TOP pride themselves on being an evidence-based party. So it behooves us to examine the evidence behind Gareth Morgan’s suggestion that TOP have a real chance of winning representation in Saturday’s election.

Question:Has any party ever achieved what TOP is trying to achieve?

Short answer: No.

Long answer:Only one party has ever won representation under MMP in New Zealand without a sitting electorate MP from a sitting party. That sole exception is ACT, who had several prominent former Labour and National cabinet ministers. That happened in the first MMP election, when everyone and their mum voted minor party.

Not many parties have won representation under MMP in New Zealand, whether through the 5% threshold or local seats. Only one MP has ever won representation for a party that didn’t have an MP elected in 1996 for one party or another: Hone Harawira, for Mana.

Most of the small parties that have won representation have done so via a local seat (Māori, Mana, Progressive, United, ACT, and NZ First have all coat-tailed in). Only 7 parties have ever reached 5%: National, Labour, the Greens, NZ First, ACT, the Alliance, and United Future. The last three have all failed more times than they’ve succeeded and have basically shriveled away to nothing (or, worse, to David Seymour). Scores of parties have failed to reach 5% OR a local seat: the Conservatives, Christian Heritage/Coalition, Legalise Cannabis, Destiny, Outdoor Recreation, Future, etc.

Question: Does the polling suggest TOP have a chance of reaching the 5% threshold?

Short answer: No.

Long answer: No. TOP have never exceeded 2.5%—half the threshold—in either the Radio NZ or the Stuff poll of polls. From information publicly available, their highest poll results are 3% and 3.5%—both on polls leaked from Labour’s internal polling. Most polls have had TOP between 1% and 2%. And their polling isn’t improving—if anything, it’s getting worse.

Question:Might the polling be wrong?

Short answer:Anything is possible, but TOP reaching 5% would require polling error on an unprecedented scale.

Long answer:It’s possible that the polls are wrong. It’s difficult to poll correctly and some error is inevitable. In 2014, in the week leading up to the election, NZ First polled 6.6% on Fairfax-Ipsos (they actually got 8.66%), the Greens polled 14.4% on 3 News-Reid Research (they actually got 10.7%), and the Conservatives polled 3.3% on Herald-Digipoll (they actually got 3.97%).

But polling averages and patterns are more reliable than individual polls. And even the famous polling underestimations of Brexit and Trump were basically within the margins of error. Both outcomes were considered less likely than the alternative but not out of the question. TOP cracking 5% would be way beyond the margin of error and completely bizarre.

Even with the errors cited above, polling averages in NZ in 2014 were reasonably close to the final results. The issue of many polls being landline-based is well-known, but also well-known to the polling companies themselves, and they have ways to correct for landline misrepresentation (and their relative accuracy last election shows they do pretty well at it). No party shot up to more than double its polling average on election day. If this happened for TOP, it would be polling error on an unprecedented scale.

Question: NZ First unexpectedly came back in 2011; could TOP do something like that?

Short answer: This situation isn’t comparable to that.

Long answer:In 2011, NZ First shot up in the polls after Winston capitalised on the Teapot Tapes scandal. Before TeapotGate, NZ First were polling only a bit better than what TOP are polling now. After TeapotGate, their numbers shot up. In the last set of polls before the election, they were above 4% in every poll except Reid Research (generally an inaccurate poll), and at 6.5% on Roy Morgan. They actually got 6.59%. It’s also worth remembering that NZ First were an established party who have never polled below 4% in any election since MMP begam.

There is no indication of any one-off event that’s going to shoot TOP up in the polls. (In fact, the Gareth Morgan Attention Meter has been at dangerously low levels for weeks and has now dropped to zero.) It’s still theoretically possible that such an event could happen in the next four days, but TOP would have to rise further and faster than NZ First did to crack 5%.

Question:Could TOP win a local seat?

Short answer:There is no evidence to suggest they will come close to winning any local seat. Morgan might have had a chance, but he isn’t standing in a local seat.

Long answer:In a “major campaign shift” after voting already began, TOP have started pleading for local votes in 13 seats, as an alternative route to representation as the hope of reaching 5% slips away. But it’s too little, too late. Winning a local seat when you’re not one of the big two parties is extremely difficult. It takes a concerted effort, not a last-minute plea for Grant Robertson’s votes.

Anyway, there’s no polling evidence (or any evidence) indicating that any TOP candidate has any hope of winning any local seat.

This is a good time to remind ourselves that no new party has ever won a local seat (or any seat) without a sitting MP or some high-profile former cabinet ministers. Gareth Morgan could have been the first exception to this, because he has a high profile and a lot of resources. But for some reason he declined to stand in a local seat—he’s a list-only candidate.

Question: Is this a good year for a minor party to achieve the never-before-achieved?

Short Answer:No—on current polling this will be the worst MMP election ever for minor parties.

Long answer:No, this is not a good year for a minor party to try to achieve the never-before-achieved. Before Jacinda took over, it might have been. But now, it’s looking like the worst ever year for minor parties since MMP began. On the latest figures, only about 16.5% of party votes will go to minor parties:

Question:Couldn’t a vote of support for TOP’s policies still help those policies come to fruition, even if TOP don’t win representation?

Short answer:Maybe, but you’d have to really prefer TOP’s policies to any other party’s policies for this vote of support to pass cost-benefit analysis.

Long answer:Sure. This could be the case—indirectly, if a decent party vote makes other other parties more likely to adopt TOP’s policies, or makes TOP more likely to come back next time with a more evidence-based electoral strategy. If you do the Spinoff’s Policy tool, you may find that you greatly prefer TOP’s policies to anyone else’s policies.

If you think TOP’s policies are so much better than the policies of any other party that you’d do more good by giving a symbolic vote of support to TOP’s policies than by helping your second-favourite party maximise their representation, then by all means vote TOP.

Or if you want to do a protest vote against the six parties that actually will get representation, by all means vote TOP.

Or if (for whatever reason) you can’t morally justify voting for any of the six parties that will actually get representation, by all means vote TOP.

Or if you believe it’s your civic duty to vote for your favourite party, strategy be damned (and if your favourite party is TOP), by all means vote TOP.

I’m sure there are plenty of reasons you might want to vote TOP. But if you think they have a realistic chance of getting into Parliament, you’ve left evidence behind. TOP-esque policies are more likely to actually be implemented in the next three years by the Greens, which is one reason I’ve party voted Green.

As for you, you should do what you want with your vote, even if it’s a principled unstrategic vote or a protest vote. I just don’t want people voting under false misconceptions. I wrote this blog because I believe “TOP have a realistic chance of winning representation this election” is a false misconception, according to the evidence available to us.

Question:So what should TOP do if they want to get into Parliament?

Short answer:Campaign for electoral reform and be more tactical next time.

Long answer: Here I’m switching into my opinion on effective strategy rather than sticking to the evidence. But for what it’s worth, here’s my opinion:

TOP should devote their considerable resources for the next 3/6/9/12/15 years to campaigning to make our electoral system more democratic. For example, by campaigning to lower the blatantly anti-democratic 5% threshold and/or introduce instant run-off voting for local seats and sub-threshold party votes. This would remove the spectre of “vote wastage” that places a near-insurmountable burden on new and small parties like TOP. It would be good for them and good for us. And it worked for Rod Donald with campaigning for MMP.

Next election, if TOP want to run again, they should do extensive research working out which local seat would be most open to electing Gareth Morgan as their local candidate. And they should stand him there. They should door-knock this electorate like crazy, poll it heavily, and widely publicise any positive poll result all around the country to build the impression that they’re a safe party vote, due to coat-tailing. By doing this they could help make it a reality.

I wrote this post on Facebook and it’s got a bit of traction so I thought I’d put it here as well. (These thoughts aren’t unique to me: other people are makingsimilarpoints.)

Most people intending to vote Labour, Green, TOP, Māori, or Mana probably have a reasonably similar idea of what we want our government to look like: more action on social justice and the environment, for example.

This post is an appeal to all those people to party-vote Green as the best choice for the government and Parliament you want to see—for the next three years and beyond.

(By the way, I’m not a Green loyalist: In previous elections I’ve party-voted Internet Mana, Mana, Green, and United Future.)

Here are my reasons:

The Greens have the best and clearest policy on the biggest issues that matter the most: halting climate change and ending poverty (though TOP, Māori, and Mana probably have better policy in some areas). Labour are pinching Green policies left right and centre, which is a good thing. In government, the Greens would lead and hopefully Ardern would follow.

The Greens need us. Based on the polling info we have at the moment, I’d say it’s at least 80% likely they’ll get back in, but it’s not certain—they need our votes. In contrast, Labour don’t need our votes, Māori and Mana need electorate votes more than party votes (though Marama Fox needs party votes so the Māori party would be my second choice), and TOP won’t get in, unless the polls are wrong to an unprecedented extent.

A vote for Green is a vote for an Ardern-led govt. But it’s a vote for more Green people & influence as part of her coalition, rather than more Labour people & influence as part of her coalition (or more NZ First people & influence…). Looking at the party lists, numbers 7,8,9,10+ on the Green list would be more effective advocates for the kind of government we want to see than numbers 44,48,52,56 or whatever on Labour’s.

Even if you prefer Labour to the Greens, do you prefer them 9x as much? They’re currently projected to get 9x as many seats. When your favourite party is surging so much, why not help their junior partners out a bit?

If the Greens underperform their polling a bit, they could go below 5%, and thousands of votes for an Ardern-led govt would be wasted. Depending on other results, that could be the difference between a Labour-led government and a National-led government. If Labour underperform their polling a bit, it would certainly affect things, but it wouldn’t have as significant an effect as the Greens missing out.

A Labour govt without the Greens (and preferably the Māori party) keeping them honest would disappoint most of us. Labour have a long history of disappointing the left. They’ve also achieved stuff for the left, but they do it when they’re pushed from the left, not when they’re pushed from the right. The exact same thing is true if you substitute the word “Māori” for “the left”.

Most important for me: A vote for Green this year is a massive vote of support for Metiria Turei and for beneficiaries, i.e. the poor, i.e. Jesus. (And imagine if it went down in history that when a party stood up for the poor in that way they were driven out of Parliament. I’d rather it go down in history that they did take a hit because of benny-hatred and Jacindamania, but they survived, formed part of the government, and helped lead it to a more compassionate policy for the poor.)

Election results before special votes (specials might change one or two seats but nothing substantial)

One initial thought: While certain people get up in arms about using the MMP threshold system to gain representation, the real problem is how big parties can use it to deny representation… whether Internet Mana or Conservative. So RIP Internet Mana and even the Conservatives, who earned their right to air their lunatic views in Parliament with 19 times United Future’s votes.

Also, John Campbell is quite wrong to say the deaths of these two shows that “money cannot buy politics in New Zealand.” Who does he think pays National’s extremely successful PR people? What does he think is the force that keeps mainstream media so uncritical, anaesthetising, anti-intellectual, anti-policy and pro-National (despite his best efforts to work against that)? In fact, what it shows is that money is no substitute for good strategy, being in tune with dominant opinion in your society, and/or (in our unjust electoral system) support from a major party.

Anyway, onto how I was wrong…

Of all the blogs I’ve written, I think the most off the mark was this one where I said I was “(tentatively) happy about Internet Mana.” Second would be this one where I underestimated how bad Dotcom’s failure at the Moment of Truth was. I may have been wrong when I backed Cunliffe for Labour leader too, but I don’t know if it would have made much difference if Shearer or Robertson or Jones was in charge (probably the main difference would be that if Shearer had stayed on, there would have been a cleaner break post-this-election).

I was wrong because I underestimated the backlash of dominant opinion in NZ against Kim Dotcom (not so much when he was a victim of the US-style-US-instigated illegal police raid, but certainly after he started trying to throw his own power around). This felt its effect in a few ways:

It looks like for every apathetic Gen-Y-er vote Internet Mana won for the left, they scared several boomers, conservatives and Stuff readers towards the far-right. Though this isn’t 100% clear. Labour started to drop in the polls after the Internet Mana deal. But they also dropped after the WhaleOil + Herald smear on Cunliffe that turned out to be 95% bollocks, but not before doing its damage in the polls. And, bizarrely, Labour dropped after Dirty Politics too.

NZers don’t like what they see as “dodgy deals,” though they’re hypocritical about it: they’ll forgive National’s Epsom and Ohariu cups of tea, but when they already didn’t like Harawira or Dotcom (and didn’t understand the ways the two parties are consistent; thinking it was entirely a money thing), the deal was another reason to oppose them and anyone who might end up in government with them.

Dotcom and the Internet Mana deal seems to have turned Te Tai Tokerau voters off Hone Harawira enough that they could be convinced by Labour, National, NZ First and the Māori Party to vote for Labour’s Kelvin Davis. Labour had no choice but to oppose Internet Mana, a populist boomer swing voter’s nightmare, given that they rely on the opinions of such voters for success. But they tried to have their cake and eat it too by not unequivocally ruling Internet Mana out of any kind of government agreement, which was understandable given they’d be struggling to form a government without them, but ultimately a big mistake. They were close enough that Internet Mana presumably scared baby boomers and conservatives away from Labour, but far enough away to kill off Internet Mana and waste thousands of change-the-government votes, including my own.

Dotcom failed at the “Moment of Truth” worse than I previously acknowledged. He’d been promising for months to provide evidence Key knew about the US plot against him earlier than the day before the raid. Instead, he made the MOT entirely about spying, and leaked a bizarre e-mail without anything to back it up, which didn’t prove anything – I still can’t figure out if it was fraudulent and, if so, whether Dotcom knew it was fradulent or not; but it’s certainly not convincingly real. The annoying thing is it’s quite likely he’s right about the “political pressure” on his case. But his e-mail took credibility away from that theory, rather than adding it.

Even without that failure, the cartoonish and manipulative way he went about the MOT made it too easy for people to simply ignore all the genuinely alarming revelations about spying at the MOT, and Key’s dishonest and desperate (yet apparently successful) defence. Dotcom tried to use the event for his ego and his desire for revenge, rather than for the good of the country. If he wanted to raise awareness about spying and really get through to NZers about it, he should have:
(a) not talked it up but kept it quiet, exceeded expectations and let the revelations do the talking;
(b) kept revelations from spying separate from revelations about his case, or at least made sure he had proof about the latter before revealing anything;
(c) released the info months ago rather than five days before the election in a transparent attempt to influence the vote; and
(d) stayed in the background himself got a respected figure from the left and a respected figure from the right (e.g. Graeme Edgeler) to front it.
(Possibly Nicky Hager should have followed a similar strategy with Dirty Politics: not just writing about the WhaleOil stuff, but making sure he also focused on some of the dodgier things Labour have done… even if it meant dredging up old news. I don’t say this for ethical reasons – “balance” is an illusion and he’s perfectly justified in having a specific focus on WhaleOil and associates – but for rhetorical strategy reasons. If he’d come across as more bipartisan it would have been harder to write him off as a “left wing conspiracy theorist.” He could have left it to the readers to realise National are so much worse at Dirty Politics than Labour.)

Kim Dotcom clearly has no idea about NZ culture, and the NZers he had alongside him (Laila Harré, the Mana people, Bradbury, Edgeler etc) should have known better, just as I should have.

To Dotcom’s credit, though: tonight he’s acknowledged that he poisoned the party with his toxic brand. (His concession speech is in stark contrast to Cunliffe’s denial. If Cunliffe had said he’d have to go back to his party and see who they wanted to continue leading the party, they may have let him stay on. But saying he’s going to hold onto the leadership probably guarantees he’ll be rolled… the only thing leaving him there is the fact they don’t have anyone better).

I’m not going to say I was wrong to vote Internet Mana, but I was definitely wrong not to realise the experiment would actually make Key more likely to be re-elected, not less.

(Of course, there are other reasons for tonight’s result too: Labour’s bitchy in-fighting, lack of consensus about what they stand for, and general incompetence; National still being extremely good at PR; a docile and blatantly biased mainstream media; dominant “common sense” in NZ being a lot more in line with National’s confident neo-liberalism-with-lip-service-to-welfare-state than anything any other party’s offering; etc. And of course it’s ridiculous that Kim Dotcom and Hone Harawira – whose policies are quite normal in Germany or pre-1984 NZ – are seen as dangerous extremists while ACT are seen as acceptable coalition partners and the Conservative joke party won around over 85,000 votes. But it would be denial to blame the media and dominant ideology entirely – the various mistakes of the left-of-NZ First also played a significant role).

PS: I was also wrong about the polls – turns out they were actually biased AGAINST National this time. Or maybe the media were right that the Moment of Truth aftermath and Dotcom backlash actually gave a bump to National. Or maybe soft National voters / Labour voters without hope freaked out when there was a last minute turn away from National and it looked like Winston Peters or Colin Craig might be in government? It’s impossible to know.

PPS: I was also wrong to spend so many hours writing blogs during the last parliamentary term. This will be my last blog for Cut Your Hair, at least for the foreseeable future. Thanks all readers and sharers and commenters etc; it’s been cathartic if nothing else.

After an eleventh-hour resurrection of Cut Your Hair just before the 2017 NZ election, the blog has re-overtaken its old rivals Put ’em all on an island, Keeping Stock and, the ultimate nemesis, Room 5 @ Melville Intermediate School.

(However, these rankings should be taken with a large grain of salt because not every blog is included, the stats are very fakeable, and each counter gives different stats, as you’ll see below)